PATRICIA MARTIN

BIO

In my second year of a three-year curriculum I am working on my MFA in textiles after a long career teaching art in an elementary school environment. I also currently teach weaving to adults year round in my studio. My artistic voice comes through working with threads both by interlacement and by coloring or dyeing the threads with the use of the floor loom.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Minimalism always draws my eye to take a closer look. I prescribe to follows a line. This line travels with tensioned certainly. I am the activator; I am not able to relinquish the action involved with process of the making.

My fiber work is about time, and emotions that cross the lines between what is public, private and collective. Working solitary the activation of motion is fed by the observation in public spaces and the perceived rational that is always butting its head against what we call “the line of acceptability.”

The use of organized threads, yarns, ropes, metal, pipe or wood under tension is the material undercurrent. There are deep roots in domestic thought, and political actions. How the viewer responds is also part of the tension. I want the viewer to interact with my work from the inside and outside, taking up space and activating a place to rest. The experience of color and movement and how the eye travels intensifies the structure.

We may not necessarily see the forward movement on the historical continuum but by the use of tension both in a philosophical, physical and sensory mode my fiber sculptures try to capture this tension.